For our sake, don't cut Third World aid

Clare Short has done it again. The gaffe-prone International Development Secretary who chastised Montserrat's volcano-stricken people for 'wanting golden elephants'; and who told us not to bother giving money to famine-hit Sudan in 1998 as they had sufficient aid, has quietly cut financial assistance to some of Africa's most stricken countries. As we report this week, Ethiopia - in the grip of a terrible drought and subsequent famine - has seen its aid budget cut from £39 million to £19m over three years. Her officials will no doubt argue that the present war between Ethiopia and Eritrea is the reason, amid fears that aid would be diverted to the war. But the case for the cut for Mozambique, reeling from the devastating cyclones that killed thousands and destroyed large parts of the country's infrastructure, seems impossible to make.

For the same period Mozambique will see its total long-term development budget slashed by £24m, despite assurances that New Labour was committed to helping the people recover from their tragedy. Indeed, it now seems apparent that the extra emergency aid that Ms Short committed to Mozambique has simply been deducted from the country's development budget.

What makes the Mozambique case more extraordinary is that three weeks ago officials in Ms Short's department were arguing for Mozambique as a proper recipient of British aid through its commitment to education and the rapid course of its political development.

Where is our money going? The answer, it emerges, is to Sierra Leone which is to get an extra £25m in long-term aid despite the continued fragility of its civilian administration and the participation of former killers of the RUF. Unlike Mozambique, where the peace process has been a success, in Sierra Leone killings continue and the peace process lacks credibility.

Ms Short had appeared to have won the aid battle, increasing levels of British support to levels not seen since the mid-Eighties. Now the suspicion must be that, like many of New Labour's financial pledges, it is all smoke and mirrors. But Ms Short and her department are not alone in practising these sleights of hand. The truth - only too apparent to those in the developing world - is that aid from the First World, for an emergency or long-term development, is at best given grudgingly and too often in pursuit of local agendas.

Aid for the world's most vulnerable nations cannot depend on the enthusiasm of a Minister, or an administration, for certain countries. Our debt to the developing world demands consistency, not just as individual nations but as an international community. The alternative is that as we rob the world's suffering people of a dignified existence, we give up our own dignity, too.